Automation should be one of the main concerns of your growth strategy. Or how bad processes killed one of the most promising startup I worked for. A few years ago, I joined a Parisian start-up as an Ops intern. Imagine: a dream workplace for the student I was - a creative powerhouse, with a budget capable of supporting almost any project and a leader in its market. But here’s the thing, in my team of 10, we were 3 interns. Actually every team had between 1 and 3 interns. Felt like I was still in uni… The narrative was very simple: the company raised a lot of money to support its growth, but the organisational system didn't follow at all. The “solution”? Hiring dozens of interns to compensate for the lack of processes. Around 50% of my time was spent on repetitive tasks, that I had to do once a month, multiples times a week, or even every morning.  I was literally copy-pasting between tools and google sheet. If you are in that situation today, my advice is clear: take the time to identify the tasks that have low added value or are prone to human error. By automating them, you're investing now in your scalability and sustainability. Your future self, your team and your company will thank you for it. The end of the story? At their peak, they reported a revenue of $73 million per year for 400+ employees. Last summer they went into bankruptcy and got acquired by their competitor for less than half a million dollars…